With the electricity crisis Chacumbele is getting a little nutty. When supposedly he wants to get to the bottom of things, he makes absurd decisions, which can only aggravate the problem.
With the creation of the Ministry of Electricity Chacumbele does not know he has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Rafael Ramirez, Minister of Petroleum and Energy, got really pissed upon hearing of the matter and, quite beside himself, demanded that the new minister will not be given water. In addition, he mocked Angel Rodriguez (the new Minister) mercilessly.
In the midst of this disaster, the Boards of Edelca and Cadafe have yet to meet with the new Minister and all is on stand by at the headquarters of Cadafe, in El Marqués, where the new ministry will function. Moreover, the military, who thought they had secured the electric area as their hunting ground (in all senses), have been displaced, even if Chacumbele asked General Hipólito Izquierdo to “stay around”.
Izquierdo has yet to turn over the position to unionist Rodriguez.
In turn, Izquierdo complains about being the victim of “injustice” because both he and Gen. Machado, the former president of Edelca, had warned for years about the catastrophe that was approaching if nothing was done. He says Chacumbele never paid him any attention. Entre tanto, Su Excelencia, Meanwhile, His Excellency, the reincarnation of Simón Bolívar, each day has a more absurd idea on how to confront the crisis he created.
With forced jokes he wants to minimize the dramatism of the crisis, but what his wisecracks have produced is ill-tempered sulking jokes by a lot of people that voted for him and that have suddenly discovered what an incapable guy the man has turned out to be.
The Devil's Excrement 
November 9, 2009 at 1:23 am
Its like Venezuela is shrinking and everyone has to make do with less and less and Chavez is only trying to direct the flow of shrinking resources, goods and services to his most favored supporters.
How long before they blame surplus population for their problems?
November 8, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Gringo:
Certainly Chávez has a very special set of skills: he is charismatic, lies convincingly, has no scruples, knows how to use & abuse power to stay in power, knows how to destroy the opposition.
Apart from that he is as stupid as can be. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and with the enormous inflow of money would have at least managed to maintain a semi-functioning government at least as good as the previous governments. Instead we see incompetence, destruction and deterioration everywhere, takes a “special” kind of president to achieve such a dubious feat.
November 8, 2009 at 7:45 am
Recently of Clifton, Va.
GWEH: He got busted over some Vehiculo Blindado deal kickback scheme. You’re saying that was the window dressing?
November 7, 2009 at 8:06 pm
correction: that’s GERRY CHAVEZ formerly with USG ICE / DHS.
November 7, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Kepler: I like your take on hardware w buggy software. Puts it well.
Roberto & firepigette: re evil geniuses much smarter than Chavez behind him. I don’t know enough to comment, except to point out that part of his team consists of ex-guerrillas and academic Marxists, many of whom are undoubtedly rather bright. Then again, some were bus drivers.
FDR was not as bright as many of his team, but he was still able to control them. From what I read, FDR would get his “brighter” advisers with opposing views go at it on a given issue, before FDR had committed himself. FDR would pick up the pieces after the airing of views and make a decision. If Thugo is not as bright as many on his team, I suspect he is able to easily control them if not necessarily in the same manner as FDR. Thugo knows nothing about how to be a competent administrator , but he is very well versed in how to accumulate and maintain power.
Maybe Thugo is the puppet of someone behind the scenes. I don’t know. My suspicion is that he is not a puppet. But this is all speculation on my part. ¿Que sé yo?
November 7, 2009 at 4:01 pm
“I know that for a fact.”
“He dicho.”
November 7, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Roberto said: Gringo:” Don’t confuse Chavez the “leader”, with Chavez, “the man”. He is simply the spokesperson or puppet if you will, of others who are much smarter than he.”
This is much truer than what most people think.There are evil geniuses behind his moves.I know that for a fact.
November 7, 2009 at 2:55 pm
The cop actually drags the cameraman BACK toward the oficialistas in a true example of Brown Shirt tactics.
November 7, 2009 at 11:40 am
PS don’t miss video in the link above
November 7, 2009 at 11:34 am
Here you go… how do you explain this?
http://www.laverdad.com/detnotic.php?CodNotic=23317
November 7, 2009 at 9:32 am
Kepler, I often repeat this little known fact about Venezuela: it’s the number one per capita consumer of cocaine in the world and has been for a long time. It’s Venezuela’s dirty little secret that society seems to ignore. Kids in Venezuela get hooked on cocaine paste at the median age of 12, the lowest on the continent and probably the hemisphere.
Regarding your other comment about producing cocaine: Coca has been grown in Venezuela for decades. I don’t know how much and whether current growth is protected however, final processing labs operate in Venezuela many with the complicity of the regime. From a logistics point of view it makes sense to final process in Venezuela where obtaining the chemicals from abroad is a cinch.
The regime will make a show of pot and cocaine busts but these are small time busts of non-sanctioned operations. In what other country does a cabinet member show up with microphone and cameras every time there is a bust? Look at the latest show over a shipment of pot… big fucking deal.
Narcotics trafficking goes to the highest levels of the regime. That includes Chavez. DGIM, ONA, GN and others are all involved. Fuck, DGIM was sending cocaine to the US in containers that had been cleared by US DHS! That is the Jerry Chavez case which USG swept under the rug.
November 7, 2009 at 9:00 am
Hugo is not an idiot. He has developed his intelligence according to his upbringing and environment.
Most of those slum thugs are not a bit less intelligent than the guys from the Max-Planck-Institut on Physics or many a Hardvard graduate.
Their hardware is just used by very buggy software or it has only software for plundering/bullying. They are excellent at that.
Hugo may not know a thing about economics or science or education, he is certainly destroying Venezuela, but he knows a bit about how to move some people, disqualify the peoples. He knows how to move the strings to control the people with the weapons in Venezuela.
As long as we keep saying “es que son brutos y siguen a chabruto”, we are shooting in our own foot.
I agree with what Gweh says here.
On a nutshell:
1) most Venezuelans think the only corrupt are the others, few are ready to make sacrifices (and I know, it is hard), a lot are profiting from the plunder taking place now and would never think about what the consequences of their acts regarding currency businesses, bond selling and buying, etc are for Venezuela as a whole, for the children being born now in El Tigre and Vargas, Los Teques and Guasdalito, for those who can’t get hold on dollars.
2) most Venezuelans are not aware of how bad the education of the majority is
3) Venezuela is chock-a-block with weapons
4) Venezuela is a pressure cooker:
– huge amounts of people in the slums live on imported food bought by petrodollars, people who may become very hungry once the bubble explodes
– one of the highest birth rates of Latin America
– higher percentage of people living in urban areas and not able to just turn back to the land
5) Venezuela is about to turn into a cocaine producing country if nothing radical happens
6) Venezuela is already a big cocaine consuming country (I have got some very ugly details about the worsening situation thanks to the physicians I know in public hospitals)
7) the opposition is being lead by people who still (no crime on that, but no advantage) are mostly in contact with the upper middle class and came from there, people who studied in private schools and have been abroad, people who ignore most Venezuelans are not like that and have a completely different perspective
8) chavismo leaders have a very faulty knowledge of their own ideology
or ideologies and most chavista officials just regurgitate what some of their ideologists tell them to say to “el pueblo” but at least that shitty ideological rubbish together with demagoguery move the people
9) that talk is more effective than the talk of many opposition leaders,
people who may have a PhD in law in Paris or Hardvard or at least Ucab but who have never thought about how to counterattack the ideology of the pseudo-communists or communists and who would have never think about looking it from the other perspective, just for the sake of trying to understand it.
Venezuela is NOT the US or Europe. We won’t progress by just shouting “freedom, freedom”, “Venezuela se cubaniza más y más”, “sálvese quien pueda, estamos en una dictadura”. The people in East Germany had very good education levels. We have the worst in Latin America.
As Juan wrote, we must attack them in what hurts: they really forgot the people. Most importantly, we need to tell people what ideas we have. Just saying “freedom will come and everything will prosper once private rights are restaured” won’t do. Things are more complex in a place with such inequality and where the education gap is so huge.
November 7, 2009 at 8:33 am
So that’s a flashlight he’s holding in the cartoon? Hah! I initially wondered why this image on this site when I thought it was something else grossly oversized.
November 7, 2009 at 8:27 am
GWEH: Too true. The last thing anyone needs is to create a martyr out the “Sabaneitor”
I share your opinion about the coming violence. I believed earlier in the year that come this month we would see something along the lines of El Caracazo, but I’m not so sure it will happen this month now.
But that it is coming, it is coming.
Gringo: Don’t confuse Chavez the “leader”, with Chavez, “the man”. He is simply the spokesperson or puppet if you will, of others who are much smarter than he. Chavez was able to galvanize the feelings of many Venezuelans who, fed up with the injustice, corruption and total lack of understanding by the politicians of the time of the capacity for Venezuelans to put up with “business as usual”. The peopel wanted change, and that is what they got. THe fact that it bit them in the ass is a whole ‘nother story my friend
November 7, 2009 at 8:05 am
amieres:
How stupid can Chavez be? Suggesting that people use flashlights at 3am to go to the bathroom instead of turning on the lights, because that supposedly “saves electricity”?
Someone should tell him that electricity cannot be “saved” once it’s generated and at 3am demand is far from the critical point.
If Thugo were so stupid, he wouldn’t have accumulated so much power. Granted, his accumulating power has in no way benefited Venezuela, but that isn’t how he sees it.
From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
November 7, 2009 at 5:01 am
How stupid can Chavez be? Suggesting that people use flashlights at 3am to go to the bathroom instead of turning on the lights, because that supposedly “saves electricity”?
Someone should tell him that electricity cannot be “saved” once it’s generated and at 3am demand is far from the critical point.
November 7, 2009 at 2:19 am
That’s the spirit we’re looking for Roger. See? All of us know how insane those ideas are, but Chavez will surely fall for them.
Charly, the problem is much deeper than just Chavez and his progeny. Which is why the country needs to hit rock bottom, so that EVERYONE can see where this road leads. Since Chavez wants to race towards the bottom, I say, “push him”. I’m just encouraging you to get there faster.
Kepler, thanks for sharing that. I’m one of the rabid fans of Atlas Shrugged. Not so much for Ayn Rand herself. Certainly I can separate the literary work from the author, can’t I? And in this respect I concur with the Economist’s article: “Her insight in “Atlas Shrugged”—that society cannot thrive unless it is willing to give freedom to its entrepreneurs and innovators—has proved to be prescient.”
November 7, 2009 at 12:25 am
guys, a little insight from someone who knows a thing or two about presidential security in Venezuela and Cuba. Forget about it.
let me translate: how many times have they tried to kill Fidel?
Not impossible. All you have to do is look at Iraq or Lebanon or even Italy to see how to take out a passing vehicle but leave that to others who know WTF they are doing. This is not the time or place to talk about that stuff.
What is sure: a lot more violence is to come. With or without chavez
I don’t think we have seen anything yet.
November 7, 2009 at 12:08 am
I wonder what hair brained Bolivarian solutions he will put forward this weekend.
An electric Landfundo? Take electricity from the rich and give it to the poor? Oh already done. Fourth Republic even.
Set up Bee Hives in the barrios to make wax candles?
Solar powered refrigerators? Who would not to manage that money pit?
Develop a new beer Polar Caliente. Tastes great a 45C! In Nigeria I had more than a few hot Gunniess Extra Stout. Thats what bad drinking water will do to you, but thats another post.
Invent Bolivarian Daylight savings time where time is moved forward 15 minutes for part of the year.
November 6, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Rand? Oh, not again that woman pseudo-philosopher!
Interesting reading:
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14698215
Do you want to combat Hugo? We need to show we have ethics and creative. The part about ethics: there are lots of “oppos” and nibs who are collaborating with Hugo because of the money.
They play along, they use the bonds plundering schemes…as long as there are many of them, we are trapped.
November 6, 2009 at 9:58 pm
charly- I think you should apologies or go somewhere else. I am sure many readers and the editor have NO association with such barbaric comments, it does us no good.
Venezuela Caracas gets a first- Murder capital of the world now according to The Times of LONDON
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907025.ece
November 6, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Dean A. Nash, this is what I proposed about a month ago in Africa to the horror of the attendance. Now the only soulution is to kill him and all of his garbage family down to the next generation.
November 6, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Don’t just let Chavez have his way….ENCOURAGE him. The sooner he destroys the entire country, the sooner the rebuilding can begin.
He’s going to bleed the country dry, you can be sure of that. So stop fighting and start helping. You don’t have to do much, his incompetence knows no boundaries, just get out of his way.
If you want to speed up the process, start praising him, tongue-in-cheek. You and everyone else will know you don’t mean it. Chavez won’t.
Need guidance? Read Atlas Shrugged. Although published over 50 years ago, it eerily foreshadows the nightmare that Venezuela has become.
November 6, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I wonder if this: http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/111029/el-mas-denuncia-que-el-ministro-de-electricidad-seroba-la-luz/
has anything to do with the feud.